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4/28/14

Teaching Literature With Music

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was given the opportunity
to lecture on American Literature. It was a daunting challenge: I was
expected to stand on a stage, face hundreds of students, and talk about
literature in a way that was both entertaining and informative. But as I
had seen during my time as a TA, many college students didn’t get my
brand of humor. My jokes would fall flat, my literary puns would
dissolve into nothingness, and my guffaws over hilarious scenes would
send my students scurrying under their desks.

So I thought about how to make my lecture fun for all of us without
scaring everyone away and then it hit me: MUSIC! Almost everyone loves
music. Why not pair the texts I’m assigning with appropriate musical
selections?* I’d play the music as the students filed into the lecture
hall, and then again when they left. It would serve as a kind of
soundtrack to the class, and perhaps introduce students to music that
they never knew they liked.

Here, then, are my text-and-music pairings. Go out and find these
albums, especially the more obscure ones, cause they’re pretty fun. I
mean, those songs from the 1890s? They just kill me.

America (1956) by Allen Ginsberg

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“Star Spangled Banner” from Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix (MCA, 1997)

Excerpts from the letters of Christopher Columbus and Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, & Anne Bradstreet’s poetry

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Symphony #9: ‘From the New World’ by Antonín Dvořák

The Autobiography (1771-90) by Benjamin Franklin

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America Sings: Volume I, the Founding Years (1620-1800)

Poems (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Music of the American Revolution: the Birth of Liberty

“The American Scholar” (1837) by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Hail to the Chief! American Political Marches, Songs, & Dirges of the 1800s (Sony Classical, 1996)

* For certain texts, I used clips from documentaries and films, or
audiobook readings of poetry, instead of music. You can find my full
course calendar here:
http://www.coglib.com/~rcordasc/classes/eng217-f10/calendar.html